Mr Cadmus. Peter Ackroyd
Читать онлайн книгу.
was in charge of the local Women’s Institute and, according to administrative practice, served on the board of governors of the local sanatorium on Ealing Common.
The sanatorium was under the auspices of the Roman Catholic bishop and, according to the strict regulations, even the youngest nurses were addressed as ‘sister’. They dressed as plainly as nuns in a convent, and tried to be equally demure. Millicent was recruited without discussion. Nurses were needed. As a very junior nurse – now known as Sister Swallow – she was assigned a cubicle with another young trainee, Sister Appiah, who had a habit of tearing photographs out of the Barbados Gleaner and pasting them into a large red volume. Her principal interest was in the many beauty contests on the island and it was rumoured that Sister Appiah had taken first prize in one of them; so she was known by the patients as Sister Beauty, when in fact Millicent believed that she was on the plain side. Millicent had in fact taken an immediate dislike to her, and waited for a chance to cause her trouble.
In the winter of 1944 an epidemic of dysentery spread across West London that particularly affected the frail with vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramps. There was such an overflow of fluids, of all varieties, that the nurses were happy to delegate their work to the trainees. All of whom, including Sister Appiah and Sister Swallow, were called to duty as a result. Millicent already regretted having joined the profession. One evening Millicent knocked quietly on her aunt’s office door in the sanatorium, at the end of a long corridor. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you ought to come with me.’ Her seriousness and quietness affected her aunt, and slowly they tip-toed along the corridor.
They walked through the three wards, accompanied by such a cacophony of groans and tears that Millicent put her hands up to her ears. ‘Don’t do that, sister,’ Aunt Helen rebuked her. ‘It creates a bad impression. We are all God’s children.’ At the same moment both women heard the distinctive sound of Caribbean music, vey close to the cha-cha-cha, which could only have come from the nurses’ day room. Helen stared at Millicent. ‘Is this why you called me?’
The girl nodded and then bowed her head as if in shame. She knew very well that the blame would fall on Sister Appiah. ‘Say no more about it,’ Helen told her. ‘There are more ways than one way to skin a cat.’
Within a fortnight Sister Appiah and the other revellers had been transferred to work in a mental institution at Hounslow, and Millicent had the luxury of the shared cubicle to herself. Space was still comparatively cramped, however, and a few days later there was a knock at her door. ‘Sister Millicent! Sister Millicent! God be with you!’ Immediately she sensed an intrusion. The matron was accompanied by a young woman of indeterminate age who continually brushed her hair across her face with a nervous gesture.
‘I am reserving my special ones to your care,’ Helen told her. ‘This is Sister Finch.’
So what was so special about this pale-faced brat? The fact she was Millicent’s cousin was known only to Aunt Helen at the time. Favouritism was not popular in those years of combat. They were soon left alone to compile ‘notes’ on their sick and grieving patients, many of whom seemed to Maud to be close to death.
‘Well, Sister Finch,’ Millicent said. ‘You have flown to the right nest. Finch and Swallow. Our parents named us after two birds caught in a storm. No, not a storm. A tempest. Thunder and lightning.’ She gave an involutary shudder.
After a period of recuperation Maud Finch had been enrolled at the municipal hospital on Ealing Common; both her parents had died in the previous year, during the recent epidemic. Another nurse was a blessing. She now agreed to share her house at Lambeth with Millicent Swallow, who, after the death of her mother and grandmother in the fire, was looking for a new home. She was of course also to be trained at St George’s; it was a catchment area for females who could be prepared for war work. As a result, the two young women became natural companions.
Maud had been ‘seeing’ a young man, Harry, who was employed in a department store off Oxford Street as a draper’s assistant. Millicent had been keeping a close eye upon the younger girl’s behaviour. On one Saturday evening Maud was setting out for a date with Harry at the Bermondsey Pleasure Garden in the grounds of the old abbey. ‘Now,’ Millicent told her before he arrived at the door. ‘Don’t you be allowing any “how’s your father”.’
‘Why ever should he do that?’
‘He’s a man, isn’t he? Men have sweaty hands. You just feel them, and you’ll see.’ Millicent did not trust Harry; she disliked his camel-hair coat and his brilliantined hair. Still, Maud was now sixteen and could make her own life.
It was sixpence each to enter the pleasure garden, and Harry paid. He also bought a pitcher of beer from a stall in a circus tent, and pointed out the barrage balloon floating overhead, which filled her with a vague dread. Maud was not accustomed to drink. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said, as she attempted her first glass. ‘Get that down you, girl. There’s more where that came from.’ She now realised that he must have been drinking earlier in the day; his speech was slightly slurred and he exaggerated the wrong words. ‘Feel like a walk among the trees? Of course you do. Nothing wrong with trees, is there?’ He went back to the tent and bought another pitcher of strong ale. ‘This’ll do you good, Maudie girl. Get a bit of colour in your cheeks. Hold on a mo. I’m just going to pop behind this bush.’
He unbuttoned his trousers and, to her astonishment, began to urinate. She had never seen anything like it before, and quickly began to walk towards the public spaces of the pleasure garden. He caught up with her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s a usual thing, isn’t it? You see dogs doing it. You see dogs doing all sorts of things. Isn’t that right? It’s a dog’s life, Maudie.’
He was walking her towards the canopy of trees, but she did not struggle or call out for fear of making a scene. ‘Here we are. This is lovely, this is. Nice and comfy. You just lie down, my princess. Harry boy will look after you. I can promise you that.’
He lay down beside her, watching her out of the corner of his eye. ‘You and I can have a little game. Fancy that, do you? No harm in it, is there?’ He touched her leg, and she pulled it away with a gasp. ‘Did that frighten you? It wasn’t meant to.’ He then took hold of her leg and pulled it back towards him, at the same time putting his hand up her skirt. ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,’ he said. He unbuttoned his trousers and lay on top of her. ‘Nice and pink, princess. Nice and pink.’ He took down her knickers. ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go. Up the Gunners!’ He entered her so forcibly that it would have seemed, if anyone were watching, that he was in fact stabbing her. When he rolled off her, he stared up at the sky. ‘You won’t be saying anything about this, princess, will you? You being a nurse and everything.’
Maud had to conceal her shock and hysteria from Millicent; no one could know. She told her that she had developed a migraine, possibly from excessive study, and took to her bed in a darkened room. She would not eat but would sometimes wander around the house with an expression that seemed to Millicent to be one of dismay or despair; Millicent knew very little about migraine, and concluded that these were some of the symptoms.
Maud then began to suffer from abdominal pains, but refused to visit the local doctor. ‘You’re looking very peaky,’ Millicent told her. ‘You should take some iron pills.’ When Maud missed her period, she still refused to consider the possibility that she was pregnant. She told herself that it was simply the result of stress. Yet within a fortnight she knew; her knowledge came not from any outward signs, but from an inner sense that could not be contradicted. She was carrying a child.
For some months she was able to disguise her condition and attend the municipal hospital. She wore large knitted sweaters and dresses that concealed her shape. She believed that there was no reason why she should not be able to hide her pregnancy until she reached full term. No one would ever know of her humiliation. Yet there soon came a time when it was too late for prevarication or concealment with her cousin. The signs were too urgent and too insistent. She walked calmly into Millicent’s room.
‘I’m having a baby.’
‘A what?’
‘A